Priceline Makes More Room for Ads

NEW YORK Priceline.com said it would start offering expanded graphical ad units on its Web sites.

The Norwalk, Conn.-based company redesigned all five of its travel sites, including Priceline.com, Lowestfare.com and RentalCars.com, to run skyscraper and top-of-page banner units.

Paul Hennessy, chief distribution officer for Priceline, said the new ad units would make the company’s sites more compelling to advertisers. The sites have offered standard banner units since 2001.

The growing demand for Web advertising has led several high-traffic transactional sites to make space for advertising. Home Depot said last month it would begin showing ads on its site, and eBay linked up with Yahoo to show graphical ads on its site.

In addition to high-traffic numbers, commerce-based sites often have highly valuable targeting data to better match advertising to visitors. Priceline said it would use targeting points that include time of day, geography and the type of travel product browsed.